World takes first steps toward treaty to regulate arms trade and prevent illicit transfers

First steps toward arms trade treaty

UNITED NATIONS — The world’s nations took the first steps at a conference that ended Friday toward a legally binding treaty that would try to regulate the multibillion dollar arms trade and prevent the transfer of weapons to armed groups fueling conflicts, terrorists and human rights violators.

When the conference began two weeks ago in the 192-member General Assembly, many delegates were uncertain whether there would be wide support for a treaty regulating a trade which French Ambassador Eric Danon said has been veiled in secrecy for 2,000 years because arms trading is a matter of sovereignty and the weapons are “the symbol of life and death.”

The main achievement of the conference, Danon said Friday, is that “the principle of an Arms Trade Treaty is now agreed by all the countries, even if some countries make reservations on some aspects.”

The United States, Britain and the European Union also praised the outcome of the conference and even Pakistan, which was singled out by many diplomats as being most vocal in questioning the need for a treaty, appeared to sign on.

“We do not question the validity of the objective,” Pakistani diplomat Reza Bashir Tarar said, but achieving consensus on a treaty — which will be required at the United States’ insistence — “will not be easy.”

“When we do, documents that emerge will have lasting value,” he said at Friday’s closing session.

The General Assembly first voted in December 2006 to work toward a treaty regulating the growing arms trade, with the U.S. casting a “no” vote. Last October, the Obama administration reversed the Bush administration’s position and supported an assembly resolution to hold a four-week U.N. conference in 2012 to draft an arms trade treaty with four preparatory conferences — the first of which just ended.

Danon called the U.S. reversal “very important” not only in launching negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty but in supporting other arms control and disarmament efforts.

U.S. Ambassador Don Mahley said the United States is “pleased” with discussions so far on Arms Trade Treaty and “we hope the negotiations will continue to develop in a positive direction.”

“The U.S. made clear last October our desire to see a negotiation that would produce an effective Arms Trade Treaty as a means of addressing many of the enduring global challenges caused by unregulated arms,” he said in a statement.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military expenditure in 2009 was estimated at $1.53 trillion. The top exporters were the U.S., Russia, Germany, France, Britain and Spain and the top importers were India, Singapore, Malaysia, Greece, South Korea and Pakistan.

There was no final document agreed by all delegates but Argentina’s U.N. Ambassador Roberto Garcia Moritan, chairman of the preparatory process, issued a “Chairman’s Draft Paper” which spells out possible elements, principles, goals and objectives of a treaty.

The 14 elements include common standards, implementation, transparency, compliance, international cooperation and final provisions including reservations.

A key principle would recognize that “the absence of commonly agreed international standards for the transfer of conventional arms and their diversion to the illicit market are contributory factors to armed conflict, serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, the displacement of people, transnational organized crime, terrorism and the illicit trade in narcotics…”

The goals would have a treaty “establish the highest possible common international standards for the import, export and transfer of convention arms” and “prevent, combat, and eradicate the illicit transfer, production, and brokering of conventional arms.”

Other key goals would promote transparency and accountability in the arms trade and prevent international transfers of arms that contribute to human suffering, serious human rights violations, armed conflict, U.N. sanctions violations, organized crime and terrorist acts.

Annalisa Giannella, the European Union’s representative on nonproliferation, called the meeting a success and said it “brings the international community closer to agreeing” on a treaty.

British Ambassador John Duncan said the meeting made “more progress than we expected,” adding that “those who remained unmoved by the urgent humanitarian need” for a treaty are beginning to see the economic case — that unregulated trade “harms our ability to maintain stable markets.”

France’s Danon said organizing the trade in weapons will take time, and at the beginning a treaty “will not be very constraining” and exports will be “a matter of national sovereignty.”

“But we are going to organize common rules and standards of this national sovereignty, and I think that this is a new symbol of the globalization, and part of the global governance of the world,” he said.